Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Evan Roth's latest graffiti taxonomy project is now on display at Fondation Cartier’s Born In The Streets - Graffiti exhibition in Paris. It's a study of the stylistic diversity found in Parisian graffiti tags. Evan photographed over 2,400 graffiti tags from April 24 to April 28, 2009 found in each of Paris’s 20 districts. Photographs were then archived, tagged and sorted by letter. The ten most commonly used letters by Paris graffiti writers were identified for further study (A,E,I,K,N,O,R,S,T and U). From each letter grouping, eighteen tags were isolated to represent the diversity and range of that specific character. Evan explains that the sets are not intended to display the “best” graffiti tags in Paris, but rather aim to highlight the diversity of forms ranging from upper case to lowercase, simple to complex and legible to cryptic.

The Twitterati are only too happy to take their private moments public. But Silicon Valley's technical wizards are whispering to one another over lunch that the the federal intelligence apparatus wants more, and is taking it.

Whoever is seeding the restaurant gossip is being fairly specific. A source tells us that a loose-lipped Twitter engineer recently dished that the company has allowed a federal agency to set up a tap to monitor a "firehose" of its data, including private details on users presumably including private "direct messages" IP addresses and account information. The Feds — the NSA would seem the most logical agency —then analyze the data to mine for information they deem of interest.

yet to turn a profit.

Whether the Valley lunch chatter is accurate or not, Twitter is bound to interact more and more with law enforcement as the volume of direct messages goes up and as public Twitter streams are woven deeper into people's sometimes tumultuous lives.

The takeaway for users is even more straightforward: If the NSA or your local police department might get the wrong idea about you message, don't put it anywhere on Twitter. The only truly direct message goes from one person's mouth to another's ear. And even that can end up on the internetThe Twitterati are only too happy to take their private moments public. But Silicon Valley's technical wizards are whispering to one another over lunch that the the federal intelligence apparatus wants more, and is taking it.